(no subject)
Shadow of Your Heart, Ten/Rose, Nine/Rose, Ten II/Rose (hey, it's sorta all encompassing, lol), rating (G)
He doesn't have many firsts remaining on that cool, windy day when Rose Tyler first takes his hand and both hearts in hers, but he makes up his mind to give her all the ones he has left. , 614 words
There are only so many firsts in a life: first love, first kiss, first heartbreak. Even for someone who has lived as long as he has, there are only so many possibilities. It's the math of it, plain and simple. He doesn't have many firsts remaining on that cool, windy day when Rose Tyler first takes his hand and both hearts in hers, but he makes up his mind to give her all the ones he has left.
Such a decision should have been harder, he thinks later. He should have considered where it might lead him.
At any rate, she is his first in many respects: his first upside down hug, first cry that turns to laughter, first thought when danger has come and he doesn't know where she is. First Lady even when he has a surprise victory in an election on a planet where scratching your left ear means you would like to run for the highest office possible (followed by an almost execution when he politely declines, but this is far from being a first and therefore isn't relevant).
When she holds the time vortex inside of her head and looks at him with eyes that can see all of time, she is the first woman to understand him completely in so many years that he feels safe referring to it as a first.
And of course she is his first kiss, three bodies in a row.
This is the thought he keeps coming back to. Of all those firsts, these are the ones he replays in his mind. Sometimes, when he closes his eyes, he can almost feel the ghost of her lips over him as she holds him like something that could be blown away and take her with it (he knows she is the kind of person who has been waiting her whole life to be swept away, and he wants to give her that.) In these memories, if no other time, they are objects that can belong to each other, loop around each other, wear each other's hearts like bracelets around their wrists without fear of being hurt. It's a beautiful moment, a big moment, the kind of thing you can see from space (like the Great Wall of China, except that's not correct), their love flickering up frail and new in the darkness.
When she leaves him, it is not his first heartbreak, nor will it be his last. But it is the first time he feels absolutely no desire to pick up and carry on. Martha comes and goes, watching him, and he lets her only because he is afraid to voice the truth: he has nothing left to give her or anyone else. His firsts are all gone; he's given himself away.
On a beach in another lifetime, a version of her is giving a brand new version of him his first kiss. When their lips touch, it is something both familiar and foreign, like a circle closing, turning over, sand sliding into the bottom of an hourglass. In the tiny slice of time between her taking his lips and releasing him, he allows himself to consider what it might be like to live a domestic life, to believe in a forever in the terms of an average human lifespan, to measure infinity in the bits of themselves they exchange on a regular basis. The thought doesn't scare him. He was born with the possibility of one million firsts inside of this body, this life with her could open up one million more.
In every way that matters, she has been his first. In this body, she can be his last as well.
He doesn't have many firsts remaining on that cool, windy day when Rose Tyler first takes his hand and both hearts in hers, but he makes up his mind to give her all the ones he has left. , 614 words
There are only so many firsts in a life: first love, first kiss, first heartbreak. Even for someone who has lived as long as he has, there are only so many possibilities. It's the math of it, plain and simple. He doesn't have many firsts remaining on that cool, windy day when Rose Tyler first takes his hand and both hearts in hers, but he makes up his mind to give her all the ones he has left.
Such a decision should have been harder, he thinks later. He should have considered where it might lead him.
At any rate, she is his first in many respects: his first upside down hug, first cry that turns to laughter, first thought when danger has come and he doesn't know where she is. First Lady even when he has a surprise victory in an election on a planet where scratching your left ear means you would like to run for the highest office possible (followed by an almost execution when he politely declines, but this is far from being a first and therefore isn't relevant).
When she holds the time vortex inside of her head and looks at him with eyes that can see all of time, she is the first woman to understand him completely in so many years that he feels safe referring to it as a first.
And of course she is his first kiss, three bodies in a row.
This is the thought he keeps coming back to. Of all those firsts, these are the ones he replays in his mind. Sometimes, when he closes his eyes, he can almost feel the ghost of her lips over him as she holds him like something that could be blown away and take her with it (he knows she is the kind of person who has been waiting her whole life to be swept away, and he wants to give her that.) In these memories, if no other time, they are objects that can belong to each other, loop around each other, wear each other's hearts like bracelets around their wrists without fear of being hurt. It's a beautiful moment, a big moment, the kind of thing you can see from space (like the Great Wall of China, except that's not correct), their love flickering up frail and new in the darkness.
When she leaves him, it is not his first heartbreak, nor will it be his last. But it is the first time he feels absolutely no desire to pick up and carry on. Martha comes and goes, watching him, and he lets her only because he is afraid to voice the truth: he has nothing left to give her or anyone else. His firsts are all gone; he's given himself away.
On a beach in another lifetime, a version of her is giving a brand new version of him his first kiss. When their lips touch, it is something both familiar and foreign, like a circle closing, turning over, sand sliding into the bottom of an hourglass. In the tiny slice of time between her taking his lips and releasing him, he allows himself to consider what it might be like to live a domestic life, to believe in a forever in the terms of an average human lifespan, to measure infinity in the bits of themselves they exchange on a regular basis. The thought doesn't scare him. He was born with the possibility of one million firsts inside of this body, this life with her could open up one million more.
In every way that matters, she has been his first. In this body, she can be his last as well.